


Short Change Hero

by Loudest_Voice



Category: Naruto
Genre: Ableism, Ableist Language, Child Soldiers, Childbirth, Developmental Delay, Early Childhood, Gen, Jealousy, Marital Strife, POV Female Character, Poison, Politics, Pregnancy, Sad Attempt at Pretentious Drama, War, Warnings at End Notes, With Magic Ninjas
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-06 20:10:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5429204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loudest_Voice/pseuds/Loudest_Voice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Mikoto waddles through obnoxious clan politics and tries to deal with her strange son, Konoha drowns in war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So . . . the fic I took down, you know the one, I'm going to do it in short arcs. It's a weird sort of rewrite. The good news is that I have this one outlined by chapter, and it will be through one character's POV. I'm not likely to get tangled up here.
> 
> I mean . . . sequel to [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/958073/chapters/1876013).
> 
> Title stolen from [this awesome song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkvScx3Po8I), which I listened to while brainstorming for this.

Mikoto hated being pregnant. She would have hated being pregnant even if it wasn’t all part of her duty, not just as a clanswoman, but as the wife of the Clan Head. The baby’s weight had destroyed her center of gravity. It sat on her bladder, she swore the thing bounced on random whims, forcing her to rush to the bathroom if she so much as _looked_ at water. Lately, it’d taken up a hobby of kicking at her liver. There was barely any room on her belly to hold food. She threw up acid every time her grandmother Rakshasha forced a meal down her throat. She was never hungry, but the spirits forbid that the damned baby might go without.

A few months back, everyone had been praying for the pregnancy. Mikoto had not gained weight as expected, and her belly had refused to grow the way that older clanswomen thought it should. They’d devised a special diet high in fat, carbohydrates, proteins, everything, forced Mikoto to surrender her already light training regime, then confined her to a soft futon most of the day. Now, Rakshasha worried that they’d have to force the stupid baby to come out.

“If it stays in there too long,” Rakshasha had explained, “it might be born dead.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” said Kushina later, bouncing on her feet, her eyes fixed on Mikoto’s belly. No one saw past Mikoto’s belly lately.

They were in Mikoto’s backyard, though it was more Fugaku’s really, the sun shining down on them and making Kushina’s hair gloosier than ever. Mikoto laid on a flat sunning chair, trying and failing to find a comfortable position. Rakshasha swore that lying on her left side should feel better, but it didn’t.

“Hey, can I touch your belly?”

Mikoto frowned. But at least Kushina had asked. “Alright.”

Kushina leaned closer, extended her arm carefully, like Mikoto might be an enemy exploding tag, and gently laid her palm over where Kushina’s liver would be if the baby weren’t stomping all over her insides. She smiled, then took her hand back as if she’d been burned.

“It moved!”

“I know,” groaned Mikoto. She could feel it. “This baby is going to be finicky.”

Kushina laughed, like Mikoto said something charming. If people keep acting that way, as if Mikoto’s frustration and pain are all part of a miracle, Mikoto might go insane.

“I wanna have one,” says Kushina.

“What.” It dawned on Mikoto what Kushina meant. “What?”

“A baby,” said Kushina, beaming.

“Are you crazy?” Did she understand what she’d be giving up? It wouldn’t take the full nine months, just five or so of being nothing more than an incubator, and Kushina’s lithe muscles and impeccable balance would be a thing of the past. “With who, first of all?”

“Like it’d be hard to find a man,” snorted Kushina.

“You’re not any random kunoichi,” said Mikoto. “Can you even get pregnant?”

“Yes, obviously,” said Kushina. “How do you think my village . . . never mind. I better be going, need to meet Hizashi for a mission.”

Mikoto thought about telling someone of Kushina’s plan, if it could be called that, while she tried to take a dump. The process took as long as the baby decided lately.

“It’s not leaving enough room for your entrails,” Rakshasha had said. “Maybe it’s bigger than your belly lets on.”

In the end, Mikoto didn’t bother to mention that Kushina was probably scanning the village for the most suitable sperm donor, who would undoubtedly trip all over himself to fuck her the instant she showed the slightest interest. Nobody paid much attention to Mikoto anymore, not when they needed to know if the baby kicked as often as it should.

* * *

At first, Mikoto didn’t notice anything particularly different. She got cramps occasionally, and so what if her underwear seemed wetter than usual. Annoyances, nothing more. If Fugaku hadn’t nearly fainted when she grunted and gripped the edges of the table during lunch, who knows how long Mikoto would have kept the symptoms to herself.

“You alright?” Fugaku asked, white as a sheet.

Mikoto took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then looked at Fugaku with a purposely calm expression. “Yes.”

Fugaku called Rakshasha anyway, who dragged the bubbly midwife Mikoto fantasized about choking to their house. After the typical exam, which didn’t grow less humiliating no matter how often it happened, the woman squealed happily.

“The baby finally wants to come out!” the midwife said, offering Mikoto a psychotic smile. “Since this is your first, it might take a few days.”

At first, Mikoto was more relieved than scared. All the mothers who visited her for political maneuvering swore that once the baby was born, the recovery period would pass by in a flash. She’d be back to her old self in a week at most, though keeping the baby fed would be a challenge. Some of the ones still breastfeeding their own babies even offered to help, a suggestion Mikoto had found disgusting. The baby, cumbersome as it was, was a part of her. She didn’t want to imagine it suckling those strange women who called themselves her sisters.

By the second day of labor, Mikoto was a little more afraid than relieved.

“This is still normal,” the midwife insisted, but Mikoto noted that her ever-present smile had dimmed. “Please, try some of the soup. The baby still needs to eat.”

The cramps came and went with no warning. Though the pain was bearable, the unpredictability left Mikoto adrift. She imagined being a civilian in a war zone wouldn’t be much different: the attacks came, a vicious grip of her belly and spine, doubling her with their ferocity, and she had no hope of stopping them, fighting them, or even staving them off.

“A modest dose of morphine milk would help,” offered the midwife.

“No,” said Mikoto. She wasn’t about to add disorientation to her situation, even if being alert meant nothing.

“Better for both of them if she’s awake,” said Rakshasha, who hadn’t left Mikoto’s side except for the bathroom since the ordeal started.

Mikoto was surprised and a little ashamed to admit it, but her grandmother’s cold presence made her feel a little safer.

Her water broke during one of Fugaku’s nervous visits. From the pamphlets Mikoto had read, she thought it would feel like urinating herself, but it didn’t. It came from inside her, without warning, without even a cramp, flooding between her thighs, pooling under her ass. It didn’t smell like anything, but Mikoto swore everyone instantly knew.

“Get out!” she yelled at Fugaku.

“My lady.”

The midwife stood frozen, more than Fugaku even, who sat beside the bed and met her gaze. It was more than Mikoto would have expected of him.

“I want him out,” she screamed anyway. It was his fault this was happening to her, his fault for letting his bastard of a father marry them even though he’d once called himself Mikoto’s _friend_. “Get _out!_ ” She looked around the bed for something to throw at him, then a cramp, the strongest so far, clawed at her.

She screamed and didn’t think about Fugaku after that.

The cramps came closer and closer together. “It’s close now,” the midwife, voice back around that excited pitch that made Mikoto want to stab her face “My lady, you have to focus now. The baby is crowning. You have to push in time with the contractions; coordination is imperative.”

Another cramp seized he. Mikoto screamed, gripped the sheets and forgot everything, how to breathe, how to _think_.

“Hold my hand.” Rakshasha was beside her, pulling her fingers away from the sheets. Mikoto focused on her dark gaze, on the odd streaks of black hair still left in her near snow-white head. “My hand. Squeeze like that, and you’ll have an old woman’s bones on your head. Use all the strength to push this brat out.”

Mikoto never wanted to hurt her grandmother--no, that wasn’t true. She’d wanted to hurt Rakshasha plenty of times, but she didn’t want to think about how she’d feel afterwards if she ever did it. So she swallowed her distaste and listened to the midwife’s instructions.

With the cramps growing more intense, but closer together and more predictable, Mikoto found it easier to deal with them.

“Push, now!” cried the midwife. “One, two, three . . .” Then it stopped for a bit, then it was “breathe, my lady, breathe.”

The entire process was dreadfully undignified. Mikoto was certain that she’d soiled the bed at one point. Pushing the baby out felt like the most massive, painful, awkward dump she’d ever taken. She heard its first shrill cry and a hysterical laugh burst out of her.

“You’ve done great, my lady,” the midwife was saying.

Mikoto closed her eyes, laid back of the raised futon. She opened them when someone deposited a wailing, bloody, slimy, wriggling thing on her chest. It glistened where the sun rays streaming through the window hits its back.

“That’s it?” she said.

“It’s a boy, my lady,” said the midwife.

 _Good, good,_ thought Mikoto. It wouldn’t have to ever give birth.

“Let me finish here and I’ll clean him right away,” said the midwife. 

* * *

“Not particularly big,” said Rakshasha, “but there are ten fingers and ten toes, and he breathes and screams all on his own.”

“About his name,” started Fugaku.

“Itachi,” said Mikoto.

“That’s . . .” Fugaku faltered. “I’m sure we can think of something more . . . serious.”

Mikoto glanced down at the baby latched on her breast, eyes closed but suckling vigurously. He had a la layer of fine fuzz over his eyebrows, and his hair was dark as midnight. Long ago, she’d found a weasel suckling a lonely newborn during a mission. Its cub had looked much the same, just thinner.

“He’s Itachi,” she said. “That’s what I’ll call him.”

Fugaku suggested a few more names during the first few days of Itachi’s life, then relented and began calling the boy by his name. Itachi didn’t respond. He did little besides sleep and feed. Fugaku returned to his work, whatever it might be lately, and Mikoto focused on recovering and making sure Itachi didn’t go hungry.

She had braced herself for unpleasantness, but having the baby at her breast was often a relief. She made milk continuously, and her breast engorged and ached if Itachi didn’t suckle for long enough. Thankfully, he always did. She watched him fill out and flush pink, knowing that even out of her, everything he was came from her.

“I expected this one to be finickier,” said Rakshasha on the second week. “Lucky you, he hardly ever cries.”

Mostly, he gurgled and flapped his tiny arms. His huge eyes, dark and smooth as spilled ink, looked around. When they landed on Mikoto, he stilled.

* * *

 

Against all advice, Mikoto started training before Itachi was one month old. She took her baby to the most secluded grounds in the compound and practiced shurikenjutsu in between feeding him. The clan mothers were scandalized. What if all the strain dried MIkoto’s milk?

So what if it did? She’d already introduced whole cow’s milk to Itachi’s diet. As long as she was the one holding him, he didn’t care if the milk came from her breast or a bottle. Not that Mikoto’s milkflow slowed, not even when she paused draining taijutsu routines to feed him as sweat dried on her skin.

One afternoon, she found Kushina waiting for her on the porch when she returned home. Abruptly, Mikoto realized that since Itachi’s birth, she hadn’t spared a thought for Kushina, or Hizashi, or what any of her old contemporaries were up to.

“Sorry, I had a long S-rank mission,” Kushina said by way of greeting. She leaned forward and half-extended her arms towards Itachi. “Is that it?”

“Him,” said Mikoto.

Kushina's face split into a huge grin and she edged closer, reaching for the bundle. After a moment of hesitation--Itachi hated when anyone else held him, even Fugaku--Mikoto gently passed the sleeping baby to Kushina. The transfer went well, then Kushina smiled and touched the pad of her index finger to Itachi’s cheek.

Itachi opened his eyes and let out a shrill scream that reminded Mikoto of the day he was born. Kushina balked, perhaps sensing that the intensity of the cry was not normal. Quickly, Mikoto slipped a hand under Itachi’s head and took him from Kushina’s arms.

“Well, he’s got quite the lungs on him,” said Kushina, laughing nervously as Mikoto sushed the baby. “Sorry.”

“Not your fault,” mumbled Mikoto as she swayed Itachi back and forth.

Later, after Mikoto had calmed Itachi and served some lemonade, Kushina peered at the bundle where Itachi slept without trying to touch him. “Shouldn’t you swaddle him? I read babies like it.”

Mikoto shook her head. “He hates it.” Every time some well-meaning aunt wrapped him in anything, Itachi cried. Mikoto didn’t permit it anymore. Her baby liked being free to wave his arms and kick his legs. She imagined that he was stronger than all the bigger babies around. Certainly, his kicks were more insistent.

“You reading about babies much?” asked Mikoto, remembering Kushina’s declaration that she wanted to get pregnant.

“Not anymore,” said Kushina.

“Changed your mind?”

“For now,” said Kushina, gaze far away. “There’s a war coming, Mikoto. A bad one.” 

* * *

 

“Are there rumors of war brewing?” Mikoto asked Fugaku that night.

“Yes,” admitted Fugaku as he took off his kimono.

“You didn’t think it prudent to tell me?”

“I didn’t want to worry you with the baby so young.”

Mikoto said nothing, but she doubled her training efforts and started preparing tea whenever Fugaku chose to hold clan meetings at home. Itachi remained a quiet baby and none of the men paid her any mind as she walked around the table keeping their cups ever-full. Little had changed since the days of pouring sake at Elder meetings in Rakshasha’s old house.

“The clan’s revenues continue to decrease even though war with Iwa is inevitable,” said one of the clansmen. “Is any other clan suffering thus?”

“‘Suffering is a little dramatic,” said another.

“What would _you_ call it?”

“I’d call it perfectly understandable,” said Mikoto. Silence fell over the table, but Mikoto saw no reason to keep quiet. Hadn’t she just given the clan an heir? “Most clansmen and women join the police force and earn an flat rate regardless of how much work they do. You want more money? Get more people in the regular corps and have them take on high-ranked missions.”

“Or we demand that Sarutobi raise our wages,” declared an old man whose name Mikoto hadn’t bothered to learn.

“He already did once this year,” said Fugaku.

“By a pittance!”

“Even that was too much,” said Mikoto. Someone behind her actually gasped. She refrained from rolling her eyes. “The police force has a cushy job; handling civilian spats is safe.”

“And what of feuds among our shinobi?”

“Few and far in between,” said Mikoto. “And handled by ANBU when they happen.”

“The work we do is valuable,” said the man, all but spitting at the air.

Mikoto finally recognized the gray beard. It was one of the clansmen who’d established the police. “Sure, it’s valuable. But it’s not picking up an S-rank mission with the understanding you might not make it back. That’s where all the money is in Konoha. If we want more of it, we’ll need more active Uchiha jounin.”

That night, Fugaku demands her attention. “You should tread carefully with these older clansmen.”

“Someone needs to tell them the truth, even if they don’t want to hear it,” said Mikoto.

At the same time as Fugaku opened his mouth, Mikoto heard a frustrated cry from Itachi. She walked around the futon and over to him, expecting that Fugaku would leave her be, and frowning when he followed her. The annoyance melted when she saw that Itachi had rolled over on his belly and was looking around with a furious glare, his tiny fist flying as if he wanted to return to his original position but couldn't quite manage it.

“Don’t be a grouch,” Mikoto said, picking him from the blanket on the floor. She laid him on her chest and kissed his head, enjoying the ever present baby smell that clung to him. She never thought she’d fall for such nonsense, but there she was, internally bouncing because her baby had rolled over for the first time.

“Does he ever smile?” asked Fugaku.

Mikoto had forgotten about him. “What?”

“Does he ever smile?” repeated Fugaku.

Itachi settled on her chest and made no further noises.

“Of course he does,” said Mikoto, frowning.

Fugaku didn’t challenge her, but he didn’t need to. Mikoto went to bed trying to remember what Itachi looked when he smiled. She failed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never been pregnant, but I have had the . . . uh, privilege? of delivering a baby here and there. It is not "magical" and like 90% of new mothers agree. That I've met. I got only anecdotal data.
> 
> Should I put some warnings here? I don't think that was graphic. I skipped over the placenta altogether. 
> 
> Oh yeah, and [my blog](http://www.dynamicallyopposed.com/).


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings at the endnotes for this chapter.

Mikoto watched Itachi’s face more closely after Fugaku’s comment, searching for any of the coos and gurgles that were so common when clanswomen visited with their babies at their hips. He didn’t smile or giggle, though at least his frowns lasted little time so long as Mikoto figured out if he was hungry, sleepy, or just wanted to be moved to a different part of the house. Mikoto had seen women beside themselves with a screaming baby who refused milk, had a clean diaper, and did not want to be held.

“All babies grow in the own way, my lady,” another clanswoman told her, one from an old family that boasted direct relations to Madara and never tired of making snide comments about Mikoto’s subpar cooking.

With Itachi bundled to her chest, Mikoto set out for the village’s secret libraries. Somewhere, there had to be some book or scroll by a creepy naturalist obsessed with the development of human babies.

She found two: a truly horrifying one advocating “maximum infant isolation” in order to breed more effective killers for ANBU, and one from a medic who dedicated her career to helping kunoichi raise kids that might one day function as civilians. From the latter, Mikoto learned that Itachi should already be expressing a “social smile”, responding to his name, and prefering her voice and visage over all others.

Mikoto could entertain the possibility that Itachi, perhaps, preferred her over anyone else. The baby barely tolerated Fugaku when he was well fed and about to take one of his many naps, and he never failed to scream his lungs out when anyone else tried to hold him. But she’d never seen him smile, and he didn’t react to his name any more than he reacted to any other noises.

As Mikoto stared at the page, a _boom_ pierced the air and shook the earth. Mikoto clutched Itachi, who remained unconcerned, and crawled under the secret library’s reading table. She cursed at herself, alert for any sign of danger in the secluded shinobi library, the world moving under the red haze of her Sharingan. Under the table was less than ideal--limited mobility and visibility--but she had the baby to consider.

The chuunin on duty ordered visitors to away from the windows while they identified a safe and quick exit strategy. He urged the departing ninja to make themselves available for the management of civilians. The explosion had come from the southern section, where the Hyuuga and Aburame compounds took up most space. It would relatively safe to brave the trek back to the Uchiha compound in the northern section of the village. Berating herself for the initial stupid move, Mikoto maneuvered out from under the table.

“It’s Kumo,” a ninja in front of Mikoto said to his companion. “They’re trying for Byakugan. Again.”

Dimly, Mikoto thought of Hizashi, though he was just one of hundreds of Hyuuga. She shook herself and made her way out of the library.

Outside, shinobi herded scurrying civilians through crowded streets. Sharingan did not reveal anyone who might be an enemy, so the attack had been focused on a single spot. Not random terrorism then, not even attempting to look that way. With no further explosions or threats, the civilians followed instructions from the police force without complaints.

Mikoto abandoned the ground and jumped to a roof, then slipped into the nearest sturdy branch and navigated her way to the Uchiha compound. Throughout the trip, Itachi remained pressed to her chest, as quiet as a mouse. Once home, Mikoto laid him down on her futon and found him sleeping peacefully.

* * *

“It _was_ Kumo,” Fugaku told her that evening. “They got in a merchant caravan. It’s the only way to get into Konoha with Hyuuga stationed all over the border.”

“Then they got the Tags and explosives via intravillage smuggling,” said Mikoto.

Every hidden village had its internal squabbling and semi-organized smuggling rings of merchants and disgruntled ninja trying to skim extra profit from the shinobi army’s arsenal. Ninja unhappy with their salaries, mostly career chuunin and disillusioned warriors in the higher echelons, requisitioned weapons and then passed them on to merchants travelling outside the village with flimsy excuses about losing things while away on missions. Mikoto had almost lost her jugular to Konoha-manufactured kunai more than once during her days as a jounin.

“Yes, a ceramics vendor vouched for a some artist type that turned out to be a Kumo jounin,” said Fugaku.

Maybe it had been random terrorism. The merchant passport system was a joke, but Konoha couldn’t restrict trade across its border, not if it didn’t want to end up like Suna. The civilians and most of the rank and file would demand protection that Konoha could not deliver.

“He’s married to one of our clanswoman,” said Fugaku.

“Who?”

“Hisa.”

“I don’t know her,” said Mikoto.

She looked down and found Itachi staring up at her. His huge dark eyes arrested her in place, battling with the odd feeling that someone much older than a handful of months was measuring her.

“She was genin for while,” said Fugaku. “Failed the chuunin exams twice, did five years as an assistant in the Tower, then retired and tried to launch some kind of artist career. It failed, but the guy she married is damned rich. They have three kids, two of them with Sharingan. One is a jounin and the other’s an officer in the police force.”

“Any real political power?” asked Mikoto. For the first time, she it irked her that she didn’t keep track of such things. For all she knew, this Hisa had been one of the dozens of women who brought her flowers and other useless things when Itachi was born.

“Hisa doesn’t know much about much,” said Fugaku, “but her husband brings in enough revenue that he’s occasionally allowed to talk at Clan meetings.”

 _Then the man must have more money than a Hyuuga surgeon_ , though Mikoto.

“He wants the Clan to fight the new tax on importing vases and all that nonsense meant to give the Yamanaka and edge on the market here at home,” continued Fugaku.

Ridiculous. The punitive taxes on imported goods didn’t help just the Yamanaka. It helped the entire village, the Uchiha included. Most of their women and retired warriors made artisanal fans (a habit that came after the Clan symbol, thanks to a particularly advertisement-savvy kunoichi) that sold at about half the price that imported crap did.

“Turn him over to ANBU,” said Mikoto.

“Might not be the best idea.”

“He sounds like an idiot,” said Mikoto.

“That doesn’t matter.”

Mikoto watched Itachi, looking for any sign that he registered the sharp edge that Fugaku’s voice had taken. Nothing. The baby flapped his tiny arms and looked around the room without purpose.

“We can’t let the Third scapegoat us for this.”

“Then turn over this vendor,” said Mikoto.

“The clansmen won’t have it.”

“What, they won’t stand behind your decision? Are you Clan head or not?”

Fugaku looked away. His shoulders didn’t hunch, but Mikoto thought that it must have strained his will not lose his composure further.

“Sometimes you have to be unpopular before you’re respected,” said Mikoto, nevermind that she’d never been anything close to good with politics. “We’re probably the only Clan that deals with civilians on a daily basis. We need them to trust us, or the village elders will throw us to the wolves every time they need to punish anyone for anything.”

“I get that,” said Fugaku, “but the villagers don’t think about the Uchiha, the Hyuuga, or the Yamanaka. They think about ‘clans’ and judge us all for what one is doing.”

“So?” said Mikoto. “Let some good feeling bleed over to rival clans. It doesn’t matter to them one way or the other what the civilians think.”

“It’s not about that.” Fugaku ran his fingers through his hair and squeezed his eyes shut. Those birthmarks seemed to be hidden under dark bags all the time lately. “It’s about us being the only clan in Konoha hobbled by public opinion.”

Mikoto frowned. Tried as she might, she couldn’t find a good answer for that.

* * *

 

Ultimately, Fugaku did surrender the vendor to ANBU without much fuss. Hisa, who had indeed visited Mikoto after Itachi’s birth, and more than once, returned to plead to “her Lady” for her husband’s sake.

“He’s alway been boisterous, my Fausto,” said Hisa. Tears streaked down her cheeks, staining her face with black eyeliner. “But he knows nothing of espionage and even if he did, he _wouldn’t_ betray us, or even Konoha! If not for our support, he wouldn’t be the richest of his brothers!” “If he’s so rich, he can hire his own defense,” said Mikoto.

“Money only goes so far in a shinobu court,” said Hisa. “He needs influence. He needs backing from a ninja clan, especially since he’s married into one!”

Mikoto wasn’t so sure that the Uchiha could offer much ‘influence’, considering the circumstances. “Right now, we need to be one with the rest of Konoha.”

“But Fausto is innocent.”

“Maybe,” shrugged Mikoto. Either way, the man had brought a spy into Konoha. In some ways, it would be worse if he hadn’t done so on purpose. “That’s not so important now.”

“Are you saying that Fugaku gave him up to save face with the village?” demanded Hisa.

“I didn’t say _Fugaku_.” Hisa snarled and lunged at Mikoto.

The woman, soft and aging, moved so slowly that Mikoto didn’t even have to activate her Sharingan. She grabbed Hisa by the shoulder, pushed her against the wall until her bones rattled. Hisa didn’t cry or beg. Mikoto gave her credit for that much.

“Do you know who I am?” asked Mikoto, referencing her tenure as a jounin.

“A whore who birthed a retard,” said Hisa.

Mikoto froze, giving Hisa the chance to wiggle away from her. Unfortunately, Hisa had enough waits not to physically attack again.

“Suck the village’s dick all you want, whore,” said Hisa. “They’re not the one’s you live with.”

“Get out,” said Mikoto. “Get out before I rip out your tongue.”

Hisa spat at the floor before whirling around. Mikoto clenched her fist, almost went after her even though there would be little satisfaction in beating an out-of-shape housewife to a pulp, but Itachi’s cries filled the air. She went to him, reached for his out-stretched arms and put him to her breast.

After he was done feeding, Mikoto tried to tickle the soles of feet so he would laugh. He let out a frustrated cry and kicked until she left him alone, then he looked around for a bit before closing his eyes and going back to sleep.

* * *

 

“You’ve gone and fellated the pooch now, haven’t you?” Rakshasha said a few days later.

“I don’t need that mental image, Grandma,” said Mikoto.

“And I don’t need the mess of having a granddaughter stupid enough to declare that we’re scared of the village, but here we are.”

‘Here’ being Rakshasha’s modest home, where the clan elders and the major families had gathered to reconsider their stance in regards to the recent attack on the Hyuuga compound. A significant number of significant people had rallied around the wounded Hisa to demand that her husband, a man who had been happily surrendering a huge chunk of his prosperous income to the Uchiha, be granted the support he deserved.

“I never said that,” protested Mikoto.

“You might as well have,” said Rakshasha. “I don’t understand what came over you.”

“What was I supposed to say?”

“You were supposed to kiss her ass and make stupid promises about helping that pompous ass of hers,” said Rakshasha. “It’s like you were never a kunoichi.”

But Mikoto _had_ been a kunoichi, and a damned good one at that. She kept her gaze blank when a lanky brat wearing a police vest marched Hisa in front of her. When it was her turn to speak, when Fugaku expected her to play the cowed, stupid little wife struggling with a new (and rumored to be defective) baby, she glared at everyone around the table without bothering to pay attention to Hisa.

“Since when does this clan stick its neck out for fools?” she asked. “Since when do we forgive anyone who makes us seem weak and disorganized to outsiders?”

“Fausto has been loyal to this clan for more than two decades,” Hisa yelled, looking away from Mikoto as if to rally the rest of the clan.

“And he brought a spy to Konoha.”

“By mistake!”

“That’s worse,” said Mikoto. She also turned the gathered Uchiha, mostly clansmen who probably relished in any opportunity to undermine Fugaku. “Everyone here thinks we’re cowing to the village, taking the blame for something that isn’t our fault, but the cold truth is that this _is_ our fault, and a ninja does not cower from the truth. A man we gave our name to smuggled a Kumo jounin to the village, and then that very same jounin attacked Leaf ninja.” “They attacked Hyuuga.”

“And the last time I checked,” said Mikoto, “the Hyuuga are Leaf ninja.”

For a brief moment, Mikoto made eye contact with Fugaku. He seemed blank enough. As long as he didn’t interrupt her, he could feel whatever he pleased.

“We tout ourselves as this village’s oldest, most loyal clan,” continued Mikoto. “Our police force pretends to be its guardian. And what would a guardian do once a weakness is identified? Would they coddle that weakness, or would they eliminate it?”

It wasn’t Hisa who spoke next, much to Mikoto’s consternation. She’d been prepared for her sniffling.

“So what?” asked the lanky police officer. “We turn our backs on my father just because he made a mistake? Is that who we are now? Do we sacrifice each other to save face, to look strong?”

Mikoto had more than one option. She could point out that Fausto was not, technically, one of them. That, especially to the other clans, he wouldn’t be quite an Uchiha, just a random immigrant they’d vouched for. That would spit on the face of everything the Uchiha pretended to be: a clan that helped each other through thick and thin, that valued skill and intelligence without subjugating or abandoning their weaker members; a clan that didn’t define itself entirely by blood.

“No one here would dream of forcing their mistakes on the rest of the clan,” said Mikoto. “Your father brought the spy, he should face the consequences.”

* * *

“I wish you would tell me before doing these things,” Fugaku said later as the readied for bed.

“It worked didn’t it?” Though grudgingly, the clansmen had agreed that making a fuss about Fausto’s arrest, especially since they’d already turned him over to ANBU without a fight, would do much more harm than good to the clan’s reputation.

“It’d have worked just as well if you had told me beforehand,” said Fugaku. “I don’t like going through these meetings with my heart in my mouth.”

He reached for her for the first time since Itachi’s birth, put his arms around her waist and bent down to kiss her neck. Mikoto let him, unable to conjure a good reason that he should stop and unsure that she even wanted him to. It wasn’t so bad to have sex with Fugaku; he was close enough to her age, reasonably attractive, and competent. Most times it was even enjoyable.

Itachi cried for her, giving her the excuse she needed to push Fugaku away without having to worry about explaining herself. She left their room with some words that the baby needed to be changed, thinking about the day when Itachi would be old enough to have a room of his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: pretty blatant ablism with one use of the r-word. Also, explicit sexism. 
> 
> My blog is still [here](http://www.dynamicallyopposed.com/).


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas everyone. I'm so proud of myself for getting this out on the 25th-ish. Though it's the least Christmasy thing I've ever written.
> 
> Possible trigger warnings at end notes.

“I need a maid,” Mikoto told Rakshasha after another tedious clan meeting.

“Yes, about time you realized,” said Rakshasha.

Mikoto supposed she hadn’t quite accepted her role as the Clan Head’s wife. For nearly two years, she’d treated Fugaku’s home as a more formal version of her grandmother’s: a place that she needed to keep clean and presentable, but wasn’t really hers. In exchange for staying there, she prepared food for guests and ensured that their sake never ran out. She was not to be heard, and seen as little as possible. Paying one of the poorer clanswomen to keep it tidy hadn’t occurred to her.

She would have liked to maintain a semblance of privacy, but she didn’t have time to play the simple housewife anymore. Not with rumors of war brewing. She might not be a true jounin, but she would be damned if she ever found herself scrambling like a nervous chicken in the middle of an attack. Again. She hadn’t forgotten her meek response to the explosion in the library.

So she gathered a small team of retired kunoichi, some hurtling towards old age and others forced out of the shinobi ranks by crippling injuries, and set up a schedule. If she had anyone she could trust--if she hadn’t spent her tenure as a kunoichi making connections with fellow jounin out in the village, the majority from other clans or from no clan at all--she’d have a single person to keep her secrets. But she didn’t. Forming alliances among the most vulnerable members of the clan would be the next best thing.

“Pay won’t be impressive,” she told the women, “but you can eat any leftovers. If you have young children, feel free to bring them along as long as they’re well-behaved.”

That alone made her a favorite among the women, most of whom had children or grandchildren under five. Another reason she’d chosen them. Those children (free of the entitlement and unwarranted delusions of importance among the kids in more powerful families) would interact with Itachi by virtue of being in the same house. That medic’s book had been pretty adamant about the crucial role that proper socialization played in a baby’s “social and verbal growth”.

But until Mikoto had a better idea about which women she could trust, she still took Itachi with her everywhere. She took him on trips to the village, mostly to the secret libraries and often to fairs where she pretended to browse useless trinkets while soaking up people’s chatter.

“You have any idea how hard it was to get my hands on these?” said a peddler while waving a bottle of shampoo at a frowning woman. “Kusagakure’s pretty bitter about those new tariffs. I’m practically giving them away.”

“They’re the twice the usual price!” complained the shopper.

“Like I said, the tariffs,” said the peddler. “This is the most popular brand over at Iwa, preferred by everyone from classy courtesans to practical shinobi. There aren’t curls in the world that won’t flatten under this!”

The Land of Lightning had raised tariffs? Only fucking the daimyo’s daughter in his bed would trigger a war faster.

* * *

Mikoto went to her favorite training course near the Uchiha compound daily. She meditated, set up increasingly elaborate Shurikenjutsu exercises, completed the most complicated _kata_ she could think of, pushed her muscles to the limits of power and agility, challenged herself to complete obstacle courses faster and faster, even went through the trouble of learning more ninjutsu. But without a proper sparring partner, no amount of training would make much of a difference.

Wiping sweat from her brow, she approached Itachi. “You’re not interested in a sparring partner, are you?”

Itachi looked up at her, which she considered a victory, then went back to playing with his square blocks. Mikoto sighed, sat down beside him, and stared at the top of his dark head. A pair of birds--crows with glossy wings that seemed to absorb sunlight--burst from the tree shading them. Itachi looked towards them briefly, then returned to moving his blocks around in the dirt.

He was not deaf. The books said that the most common reason babies didn’t speak was hearing impairment, but Itachi was perfectly aware of all noises around him. He looked at people when they entered the room, though he instantly lost interest in them. He liked to bang toys together, sometimes in recognizable patterns, to make his own clunky jingles. For a while, Mikoto thought he recognized his name, but she quickly realized that he would turn to her if she said any word. Sometimes.

And sometimes he ignored her and stared out at nothing, or tried to maneuver his clumsy body. Mikoto read all the books carefully. A baby Itachi’s age shouldn’t be crawling, much less trying pull himself to a standing position. Several times, she’d found Itachi crying, sitting by a wall or a chair or a table, reaching for the edge. He wanted to walk, or at least grab things lying outside his reach. He passed toys from one hand to the other, a trick Mikoto had thought insignificant until she’d noticed that some babies months older than him lacked the hand-eye coordination for it. Though he was messy, he could grab food and bring it to his mouth.

No one noticed Itachi’s agility besides Mikoto. They only noticed that he was so quiet he might not exist. When people cooed and baby-talked at him, he looked right past them. They asked Mikoto if he ever smiled and Mikoto didn’t know what to do except lie.

She sensed someone approaching them and though there was no malice in the presence, she still edged closer to Itachi, ready to run if necessary.

“You know, I almost snuck up on you,” said Kushina an instant before Mikoto laid eyes on her.

“Your chakra feels weird,” said Mikoto, eyes falling on the thick bandage wrapped around Kushina right forearm. Dark, dried blood with a greenish tint stained through it. “Since when do you need bandages?”

Kushina glanced at her arm, sniffed, then flexed her elbow and waved it around as if to show that she could. “Ran into some Iwa asshole on the way back from Kumo. Poisoned kunai, like someone dipped my nerves in acid. Not gonna lie, I screamed like a little girl. Hizashi says it’d have killed anyone else. Intelligince’ll probably pop a vessel trying to isolate a sample from my blood.”

“Should it still be oozing?”

Kushina shrugged, then crouched nearer to Itachi. “He’s gotten bigger.”

“They do that,” said Mikoto. “You still trying for one?”

Sunlight glimmered off Kushina’s red hair. Itachi grabbed at a couple of stray locks that had escaped from Kushina’s bun. She grabbed a few strands and waved them in front of his face. Itachi reached for them without making a noise.

“Already stealthier than most chuunin, aren’t you?” said Kushina, slipping her hands under Itachi’s armpits.

Finally, Itachi gurgled out a little angry cry and smacked at Kushina’s forearms with his blocks.

“He doesn’t like being carried anymore,” said Mikoto.

“Well,” said Kushina, letting him go. She smiled when Itachi instantly stopped crying. “That’s right, baby. You be independent.”

Mikoto smiled. Finally, someone saw Itachi’s purported strangeness in a positive light. Sure, it was Kushina, who had always been pretty strange herself, but it wasn’t like Kushina had any reason to delude herself about Itachi’s nature.

“I can’t have one,” said Kushina.

“I thought you said it was possible.”

“I can physically have one,” clarified Kushina, “but now’s not a good time. Kumo’s gonna declare war any day now; most of the fighting will probably go down in Iwa. If we’re lucky.”

“There’s always a war,” said Mikoto.

“This one’s gonna be nastier than most.”

* * *

An official chuunin courier visited Fugaku next evening as Isamu, a stout middle-aged woman who’d quickly cemented herself as Mikoto’s favorite maid, served dinner. Kushina had made a single miscalculation: it was The Third who declared war first, though that might well be posturing for the lower ranks. Either way, Konoha was going to war.

“It won’t mean much for the police force unless the village has to start rationing things,” said Mikoto. No civilized society took to restricting alcohol well, and it tended to be the first thing to go in hard times.

“It’ll mean something for us even if it never gets to that,” said Fugaku. “Did you forget we have people in the regular corps?”

“I said police force.”

Fugaku opened his mouth, paused, and glanced at Isamu. “You may leave us early today.”

“I’ve been thinking,” said Mikoto once they were alone, before Fugaku could rant out whatever he hadn't wanted to say in front of Isamu. “Why only a police force?”

“What?”

“People hate the police,” said Mikoto, “or at least they hate a police force that does nothing besides collect fines and crash birthday parties.”

“We do more than that,” protested Fugaku.

“Not really,” said Mikoto, raising a hand to stave off Fugaku's defensive arguments. “The Hyuuga are the medics, the Akimichi have their restaurants and pills, the Yamanaka have all that business with flowers and decorations, the Inuzuka have their dogs, and the Aburame are happy to stay small and keep to themselves.”

“What are you getting at?”

“What does a random villager associate the Uchiha with?”

Fugaku didn’t answer.

“A creepy doujutsu, fines, entitlement, and Madara," Mikoto answered for him. "The dangerous infiltration missions our jounin take our classified. The villagers rarely--no, _never_ learn of the intel we gather for the village during wars, much less how badly it's needed for victory."

“The council, and the Senju, are more than happy to nourish that image,” snorted Fugaku.

“The Senju are a handful of people by now, and the council just a group of quacking old windbags.”

“What are you trying to say?” demanded Fugaku.

“I don’t know; I’m not a goddamned politician!” Fugaku seemed taken aback by the outburst, but Mikoto pushed through. “Maybe we should try and integrate with the village, marry more people in, or . . . I don’t know, teach?”

“Teach what?”

“Anything!” said Mikoto, then an idea brightened inside her. “The Academy. Get more of our people in the Academy. Shit, get some bookworms in the school to teach language, math, and history. Who doesn’t love a teacher?”

“That’s not what the clansmen mean when they complain about respect.”

“I know,” said Mikoto. “They just want adoration and money, preferably wrapped in a bow. But that’s not gonna happen, Fugaku. No one can change their image without actual _change_ , or at least the illusion of it.”

* * *

Mikoto’s suggestion met little excitement. The Uchiha clan specialized in combat and stealth, not the coddling of babies. Only one clansman pointed out that the village had been looking for a chuunin to take on an extra Academy class just in case the burgeoning war necessitated some rapid graduations, and it just so happened that one of his daughters had expressed interest on the job.

One chuunin with affinity for kids probably wouldn’t do much for publicity in the long run, but Mikoto supposed it was better than nothing. Who knew? The girl might inspire some of her cousins to follow in her footsteps.

“It wasn’t a bad idea, my lady,” said Isamu after the meeting was over, while Mikoto helped her clean up. Maid or not, Mikoto didn’t feel right watching the older woman work while she sat on her ass and watched Itachi doodle on an old piece of scroll.

“It was a _great_ idea,” said Mikoto. “Not that it matters.”

Spurred by something she couldn’t name, Mikoto kept a close eye on clan politics. She’d been wrong about one thing; the war did have profound effects effect for the Uchiha, so much so that Mikoto could envision the the frontlines even though her role as a demure clanswoman kept her out of the village most days.

“We have five jounin deep in enemy territory,” said Fugaku. “One’s posing as the daimyo’s mistress in Lightning country, another’s infiltrated an ANBU squad in Iwa. The other three are in so deep even I don’t know where they are.”

Sharingan’s less flashy, but probably more useful, application was to copy individual quirks and mannerisms. A well trained Uchiha jounin could fool a target’s mother, but that didn’t mean that they never got caught.

“Any of them men?” asked Mikoto. The elders wouldn’t be happy about any Uchiha women deep in enemy territory either, but the thought of male Sharingan users who could be forced to impregnate countless women in a short time lost in Iwa made even _her_ jumpy.

“No, just women,” said Fugaku. “When their missions started, I knew where they all were, but now ANBU swears three of them got lost in enemy territory. Some of our elders are complaining that ANBU just isn’t being forthcoming because they don’t trust us.”

Mikoto wasn’t sure if that would be worse than having three Uchiha clanswomen cut off from all support.

* * *

By his first birthday, Itachi walked around unassisted, though he tripped often. He accepted Mikoto’s feeding schedule without complaints and, a few months after his first birthday, Mikoto weaned him off breastmilk completely. Some women argued that it was too early, especially for someone who didn’t have to worry about returning to the field, but Itachi didn’t cry for milk anymore or reached for Mikoto’s breast. Really, he had just weaned himself. What was she supposed to do? Shove her nipple at his mouth?

His cries for food were replaced by cries of pain. He tripped often and landed on his palms so often Mikoto lost count. She taught herself basic healing jutsu to deal with the superficial abrasions on his palms and knees, then beamed when he quieted down moments after the cuts disappeared. He want back to walking and wobbly running immediately, proving that he was brave.

“But he still hasn’t talked,” said Fugaku.

“Babies grow at their own rate,” said Mikoto, quoting one of the many, _many_ books she’d read on the subject.

“He hasn’t made any noise,” said Fugaku. “Besides crying.”

And so it was finally time to take Itachi to one of the midwives, though Mikoto didn’t see what a midwife would know about a kid pushing two years.

“We know a little thing or two about early childhood, my lady,” said the same woman who had coached Mikoto through Itachi’s birth. “Hello, little champion!”

Itachi stared at the woman. When she cooed at him, he tilted his head.

Since Mikoto had made it a point to read silly children’s books to him out loud, he had no trouble picking out colors, polygons, and household items, and common farm animals. His motors skills were excellent as well: he walked, handled zippers without issue, knew how to slip on sandals, and fed himself with minimal mess. Pudding included. Mikoto didn’t bother to hide her satisfaction. Her baby might not talk, but he was the smartest, most agile, most independent child in the clan.

But no matter how many silly faces the midwife made, or how many times she asked him to repeat simple words, or even just his name, Itachi refused to open his mouth.

“I’m not sure what to say,” the midwife said after almost an hour of trying to coax words out of Itachi.

At one point, she’d tried to bribe him with sweets, but Itachi had simply shaken his head and walked away towards the coloring books they’d already discarded. Mikoto considered explaining that Itachi loved bright candy wrappers, but rarely fought to actually eat sweets. For all she knew, that would just make him sound stranger.

“Do you have any recommendations?” asked Fugaku.

The woman seemed at a loss. “You must understand, most kids that won’t talk are either deaf, or dumb. Your child is not deaf.”

“He’s not dumb,” said Mikoto.

“Normally, I’d have to argue,” said the midwife, “but little Itachi clearly understands what’s happening around him. There’s no physical reason that he’s not talking. He just won’t.”

* * *

One thing changed after the visit with the midwife: Fugaku became much less patient of Itachi’s quirks.

“You should stop doing everything for him,” he told Mikoto.

“He’s a baby.”

“Didn’t you hear the midwife?” asked Fugaku. “There’s no reason he can’t talk; maybe he would if he had to ask for anything.”

Fugaku’s first suggestion almost made sense: "don’t give Itachi food unless he at least _tries_ to communicate that he’s hungry".

Except Mikoto didn’t know what to do when Itachi hopped on the stool by the breakfast table and gazed at her with big dark eyes, waiting for her to put food in front of him, as she’d been doing since weaning him. What if she demanded that he say something in exchange for food, and he called her bluff? Was she supposed to let him go hungry?

“You’re supposed to say thank you,” Mikoto said after he finished eating. “Why won’t you say it?”

Itachi stared at her, blank (thought he _couldn’t_ be, not with the way he’d passed every little test at the midwife’s except the ones that required him to talk). He hopped off the stool and scampered to the backyard, where he spent hours playing with sticks and rocks by himself every day. Sometimes, Mikoto walked out to read to him in hopes that hearing her voice would encourage him to speak.

“So, did he talk?” Fugaku asked when he returned from the police station.

“No,” said Mikoto.

“Well, how long did you refuse him food?”

“I didn’t.”

“Mikoto--”

“It’s dinner time,” said Mikoto, “why don’t you try to implement your little plan? Itachi’s napping and I’m going to Rakshasha’s.”

It was far from Mikoto’s bravest tactic, but she it would be one of her smartest. Either Fugaku wouldn’t be able to starve Itachi any more than she had, or he would. And then Itachi would either talk, or . . .

She didn’t want to think about what it would mean if he didn’t, not even for food.

“You’ll just have to get pregnant again,” Rakshasha told her. “Oh, don’t look wounded. Itachi could be a prosing scholar by now, and the clan would still need a spare heir. You better hope the next kid you have is male too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Fugaku and Mikoto take Itachi to the midwife to figure out why he can't talk and she informs them that there's no physical reason that he can't. Fukagu and Mikoto device a way to try and "coax" Itachi to talk: withhold food from him until he asks for it. This doesn't actually happen in the chapter, but it's discussed. 
> 
> My blog is [here](http://www.dynamicallyopposed.com/). Been writing there less since I've been pushing this story out in my free time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last night, I kicked around this account and found stuff I apparently posted in 2012. 2012. That's impossible. I wasn't writing eight years ago. How old am I? Jesus. 
> 
> For anyone who's been reading my stuff from the beginning (if you're still around), did you notice you'd been patiently waiting for me to get to this crap for eight years?
> 
> Warnings at end notes, as usual.

Later, Mikoto found out that Itachi didn’t say a word to Fugaku. He left the room when it became clear that he wouldn’t be served, then snuck back to the kitchen when Fugaku retreated for bed. Isamu, unwilling to withhold food from a hungry child, served him a meal fit for a king.

“I won’t tell anyone about this whole thing, my lady,” said Isamu, “but I’ll not be able to work here and see that boy go hungry.”

“That’s fine.”

“I don’t know nothing of politics,” Isamu continued, color rising to her cheeks, “so maybe it’s not my business. But I don’t see how a woman could see her baby suffer--”

“I know, Isamu,” said Mikoto. “You can keep on coming to work. I’ll talk to Fugaku.”

Years ago, while training furiously to graduate the Academy early, Mikoto would never have dreamed that her adulthood would be spent fighting for a boy’s right not to be groomed into a politician since it looked like he wasn’t suited for it. She missed the old, simple anxieties of the field.

“He’s young still,” she told Fugaku. “And he’s already more self-sufficient than boys twice his age.”

“It’s not about self-sufficiency,” said Fugaku. “It’s about my authority. How do you think it looks to the rest of the clansmen if I can’t get my own toddler to listen to me?”

Did he expect Mikoto to care about his image? She washed her hands off that the instant he sold her out and agreed to marry her. “I’d love to see one of them try and force Itachi to do anything.”

“No, you don’t,” said Fugaku, rubbing his forehead.

An angry retort died in her throat. She thought of those bastard clansmen, intoxicated by their own inflated sense of importance, standing over a boy that embarrassed them in front of their friends. They probably would have resorted to violence months ago.

“You heard the midwife; he understands,” said Mikoto. “Give me until he’s two at least. If he’s . . .” She couldn’t promise something as specific as words. “If it’s not obvious that he’s clever by then, I’ll start trying to get pregnant again.”

Fugaku nodded, but he didn’t look as happy as Mikoto expected.

Every book she’d read on the subject (that seemed to have an ounce of logic to it) argued that most young children’s personalities would be irreparably damaged by fear. What did it matter if Itachi talked, but walked around afraid of his own shadow? No, hitting or bribing wouldn’t work. She would have to utilize Itachi’s obvious talents, his curiosity and independence, to draw him into the world of other people around him.

Often, Itachi planted his feet in one spot and spent hours organizing tiny rocks that all looked the same to Mikoto. At first, she’d feared that he would try to swallow the little things, as all the books and older mothers warned that children put anything they reached into their mouths. But Itachi just liked to look at small things, to look at them and rub the pads of his fingers against them.

She bet he would love _Go_ stones.

* * *

That week, in the middle of her daily training session, Mikoto got a visit from someone she rarely spared a thought for.

“Hey, I’m finally taller than you,” he said.

“Minato.” His bright blue eyes were indeed a couple of inches above hers. They crinkled at her greeting.

“I just got back from . . .” He shrugged. “You know.”

She didn’t. Once they were assigned to separate teams, Mikoto and Minato couldn’t etch time out of their busy schedules for so much as a shared snack. Their teams and talents led them to different paths, and by the time Jiraiya took Minato on as an apprentice, Mikoto didn’t remember the last time she’d exchanged more than brief greetings with him. Even after so many years, she still felt a pang every time she remembered him, perhaps for the lonely, awkward girl who’d considered him her only friend.

“You’ve been well,” she said. The rumors about his strength spoke for themselves.

“Yeah, I guess,” he said, shrugging. “I came to ask--I mean . . . you wanna spar?”

“Spar?”

“For old time’s sake,” said Minato with a nervous chuckle.

Obviously, he wanted something else. Something that made him nervous. Mikoto remembered the awkward, if technically skilled, boy who’d spent so many childhood hours practicing basic taijutsu with her. She almost attributed his apparent embarrassment to characteristic shyness, then remembered that he’d grown into one of the Third’s closest advisers. And that she was married to the Uchiha clan head.

“Sure,” said Mikoto. “Why not?” Ulterior motives or not, she wouldn’t miss the opportunity for a spar with Minato.

Once, Mikoto had the advantage of age and size over Minato. No longer.

Minato had gotten so quick that Mikoto had no choice but to activate her Sharingan, and even then she could barely evade Minato’s strikes. They came in flurries, and sometimes in single arches that forced Mikoto to leap away without any idea about what to do next. A few minutes into it, she’d given up on finding an opening for an attack of her own.

Her heart raced and her muscles burned with more chakra than she’d forced on them in years. Though she had no hope of beating Minato, she was elated. How long since she’d had to keep her senses open for anything besides the predictable advances of one of her Shadow Clones? How long since she found herself on the ground, her palms scraping against sharp gravel as she slid away from a relentless rain of enemy shuriken?

Though they hadn’t spoken about parameters, Mikoto tried genjutsu. There was no point in trying for distilled terror; instead she attacked Minato’s sense of direction so he’d misjudge where her body moved and where her feet hit the ground. His chakra flowed through him in tendrils, direct but somehow too thin to entrap easily. Still, she infected him. His next punch wouldn’t have quite grazed her cheek, though she leaped away from him as if nothing had changed.

He’d notice what she done if she surprised him even once. She had to move quickly, and make her move count.

She ducked below a fist, then slid a step forwards and slammed against Minato’s belly. Momentum carried them to the ground, Mikoto on top. She aimed a kunai at his jugular, cursed when the force swerved directions. A second and she was on her back, a strand of golden hair tickling her cheek and a sharp edge coming for her eyeball.

Sharingan spun. An image of a mangled arm flooded her. Minato grimaced and didn’t falter. His kunai paused just over her eye, so close that she couldn’t see anything beyond gleaming dark, dead metal.

“Alright, yield,” she gasped.

Minato sagged and rolled off her. “Nasty genjutsu aren’t a part of sparing!”

“They should be,” said Mikoto. Her heart pounded. Minato looked crisp and clean, like the fight hadn’t been anything for him. Much like during childhood, Mikoto couldn’t quite resent him for it. “Why’d you really come see me?”

Minato grunted. “I wanted to ask about Kushina.”

It wasn’t as surprising as it should’ve been. Maybe it was even true. “I don’t see much of her lately.”

“More than me,” said Minato.

As far as Mikoto knew, there wasn’t a reason for it to be any other way. Minato and Kushina had never gotten along well. But she didn’t know much of anything lately.

“How’s the war going?”

“Bad,” said Minato. “Iwa doesn’t want a war, neither do we. And I can’t work out why Kumo would want one so bad either. It shouldn’t be this hard to appease everyone into backing off, but . . .”

“But?”

Minato looked up at the sky. “Every time it looks like we’re all calming down, someone slaughters someone’s family, or takes out a hit against a particular lordling, or just says something about someone, or makes a dumb tax, or _something_ , and we’re right back where we started. Diplomatically speaking.”

“That doesn’t sound too different than how these things are supposed to go,” said Mikoto, thinking of Rakshasha’s stories.

“I guess not,” said Minato, then looked at the ground. “You’re gonna get news today about Hideyo.”

One of the Uchiha jounin lost in enemy territory. Mikoto leaned closer.

“An Iwa ANBU squad caught her, kept her drugged to the gills so she couldn’t do any genjutsu,” said Minato. “We found the prison, broke in, etc. then got her body, Sharingan intact. Made a funeral pyre and brought the eyes back.”

It could’ve been worse. “Did anyone examine her to see if she’d given birth recently?” Hideyo had been missing long enough that it was a possibility.

“Our medics say she couldn’t have carried to term with so many drugs in her system,” said Minato.

 _Small favors_ , thought Mikoto. Then she laughed, though no one had made a joke.

* * *

Itachi was not as intrigued by the _Go_ stones as Mikoto had hoped for. He ran the pads of his fingers over them, tapped them against the floor, then against each other. He threw them against a wall, frowned when they fell on the ground without a single bounce, and moved to stand.

“Wait,” said Mikoto, ignoring the helpless sense of absurdity in the whole situation. “Go pick those up.”

While Itachi gathered the stones he’d thrown, she pulled out the board. Itachi ran back when he noticed she had something new, making Mikoto smile. Even without words, Itachi interacted with the world around him. He was nothing like mad people she’d seen the one time she took a trip to Konoha’s single asylum for the insane and brain damaged.

“I know you like to stare at things,” said Mikoto, mentally wincing at how strange that sound.

Itachi laid the stones on the floor gently, then passed his palm over the board. He traced his index over a vertical line, made a sudden turn before reaching the edge of the board, pressed down at an intersection, then rubbed at it, dark eyes focused.

“Listen,” said Mikoto, reaching for a white piece. “I’m going to show you what you can do with this.”

She told him the basic rules, simple as they were, taking no effort to rid her speech of metaphors. If Itachi understood that an eye in the board was not a literal eye, he gave no indication. Even in a simple nine-by-nine board, he couldn’t capture any of Mikoto’s pieces, but she noted that he broke no rules and did not complain. Since he wasn’t yet two, that alone was a bit of a miracle.

“You can ask me questions, you know?”

He didn’t shift his glare from the lower right corner of the board, where Mikoto was a move away from capturing two of his pieces. She took a shallow breath and resisted clenching her hands into fists.

“Isn’t he a little young for that?” Fugaku asked a few hours later.

Mikoto must have played and won a hundred games by then, but she wanted to see just how long Itachi could keep at it. Most people would have surrendered in disgust already, or at least _asked_ for some pointers. Her own eyes were growing heavy, and Itachi had already managed to capture one of her pieces because her attention had wandered hours ago.

“He understands the rules, at least,” she told Fugaku, rubbing her eyes.

Itachi hadn’t seemed tired once. She couldn’t device a single argument that made that impressive, or even normal.

“Yes, it’s been established that he understands everything,” said Fugaku, sighing tiredly. “I spoke to Namikaze today.”

“I know,” said Mikoto, yawning. “Saw him earlier.”

“He came to you first?”

Mikoto was so tired she didn’t notice anything odd about the question. “I guess so.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did he come to see you first?”

Finally, Mikoto paused. “I’m not sure,” admitted Mikoto. “He asked about Kushina.”

“Why didn’t you ask him?”

“I did,” said Mikoto. Itachi pulled at her sleeve. She placed a white stone on the board to distract him.

“You didn’t press the issue?” asked Fugaku.

“I was just happy to see him,” said Mikoto. In front of her, Itachi startled. He wasn’t used to hearing such a sharp tone from her, she realized. “You have any idea how long I go without talking to anyone who’s not just asking pointed questions about Itachi, or vying for some influence I can’t even give them.”

“Do you really think he came back after . . . how many years since you last saw him? One? Two?”

“More,” said Mikoto. “I remember exactly when I last saw him.” Not exactly a lie. She’d last seen him that very day.

“So what? You think he stopped by because he missed you?”

“Probably not,” said Mikoto, smirking though she couldn’t say why. “Either way, he came back.”

Fugaku sighed. “I can’t do this right now, whatever it is.” He leaned against the wall. “The Third has ordered rationing of sugar. No more than five grams a day for a family of five.”

Konoha got its canes from farmers in Iwa. The war wasn’t so secret anymore. “Sugar isn’t essential.”

“No,” said Fugaku. “But people like it, and they’ll wonder what will be rationed next.”

* * *

The police force was in charge of enforcing rationing among civilians in times of war. Every time Mikoto visited the village proper, more than a few people started pointed conversations about how horrid it was to drink afternoon tea without even a pinch of sugar. And they bet those damned cops turned a blind eye when they damned well pleased.

So much for solidarity during war time. Mikoto pretended she was as seemingly oblivious as Itachi and held her head high. Not that she could afford actual obliviousness. Itachi got nimbler every day and pounced on any opportunity to scamper out of sight. Aside from his fascination with _Go_ (which had yet to prompt even a single word), Itachi never missed a chance to chase after birds.

Crows mostly. There always seemed to be at least two about. Mikoto might not have ever noticed them, except Itachi liked them. Most days, he hawked left overs and offered them to birds that flew off whenever Mikoto approached them. It seemed harmless enough, but like most things about Itachi lately, it unnerved her.

Itachi’s second birthday had come and gone without a single utterance. Clan rumors about what a strange creature he was intensified, and Mikoto frantically searched for excuses to avoid another pregnancy. She didn’t find one, but so far it hadn’t mattered.

Two months after the first rationing order, The Third reduced the sugar allowance to five grams per _week_. Fugaku complained that it would have been easier to restrict sugar all together, at least for the police force. Every Sunday, at least one fight broke out over the stuff.

“Civilians don’t realize that we can’t waste resources on sugar when the army needs to smuggle ore and other raw materials from the Land of Lightning,” said Fugaku. “Sugar will be the last thing on their minds if our army runs out of weapons.”

Pure, gnawing bad temper kept Mikoto going to the village as often as she pleased. Uchiha women were hard at work making Exploding Tags and sharpening weapons, to say nothing of the endless hours of examining missives from enemy territory to note discrepancies in handwriting that might suggest faulty info. In exchange, their clan got delivery services from tired genin, which did little to dispel the idea that the Uchiha (and every other clan) was getting special treatment.

The point was that Mikoto could easily retreat to the Uchiha compound until the war ended, but she did not want to admit defeat. Besides, coming to the village let her know how the war was going without having to sift through ANBU’s propaganda. The war couldn’t be going particularly well. Village population had shrunk, mostly because only a skeleton crew of shinobi remained: the Uchiha police force, a handful of ANBU, and dozens of newly graduated genin.

Though the villagers might not verbalize it, seeing the streets of a Hidden Village with nothing but old people, children, and kids wearing headbands too big for their foreheads was enough to put everyone’s nerves on edge.

The nervousness did little to prepare Konoha for the first direct attack on the village, on one of the many Sundays when the Uchiha were tearing their heads off to get their pitiful shares of sugar out to the village without letting the Main Square descend into a riot. By chance, Mikoto chose that same day to observe the proceedings.

The first bomb went off so close that it silenced her right ear. Her eyes bled red, and somehow she still lost sight of Itachi.

Three enemies, drawn by the forehead protector she always wore to the village, clustered around her. Mikoto slid under the first attacker, drove a kunai into his liver, almost lost her neck to a second bastard coming at her right.

The kunai didn’t break skin, but she rubbed at it regardless as she sidestepped, mindful of Iwa’s vicious poisons. She wrapped the air around her in a thick genjutsu, one that distorted her opponent’s senses even if they noticed it. Someone screamed from her left. Civilian, probably. She launched a set of Shuriken at one of her remaining attackers. One hit the woman’s neck and the other two hit the ground.

Mikoto rolled away from the last one, her fingers reaching for her shuriken. A fourth enemy came at her flank; she greeted him with a shuriken to the eye. Head pounding, she sprayed another Iwa with a rain of fire, trying and feeling to listen for Itachi.

He never spoke. He never made a sound.

Mikoto scanned the Main Square. Grass nin targeted as many villagers as possible. A young kid jumped on an old woman and drove a kunai into the back of her neck. Her body jerked, then she faded from Sharingan’s focus like a puppet with cut strings.

How would she find Itachi? Mikoto gasped, panic over her head like a swarm of angry birds--she looked at the sky for crows, spotted a handful flying in circles under a tall tree. She ran towards them, missed a Grass ninja coming at her right side. At the last instance, the beam of focused chakra cut at her. She swayed away from the kunai. The grass ninja followed the momentum and landed a blade just above her knee.

Her joint exploded, but she gathered her chakra and engulfed the bastard in a cloud of fire. A whiff of cooking meat calmed her, and gave her the strength to push on towards the tree trunk, alert for more attackers.

She found Itachi huddled behind the fat trunk, sitting beside a corpse. Indigo blood, almost black under Sharingan, bathed him from head to feet.

“Mama,” he said to Mikoto.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: the usual ableism. Violence.
> 
> In other news, I'm about a quarter of the way through this, so I expect I'll be done at around chapter eight-to-ten. Less if I control my ADHD, more if I get sidetracked by filler scenes.
> 
> [My blog](http://www.dynamicallyopposed.com/), etc.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been reading over my old stuff lately going like . . . you know, it's pretty good. Either I haven't improved, or I've always been a talented snowflake. I'm going with the talented snowflake theory.

Mikoto swam in a sea of molasses, her limbs heavy and her chest constricted. There was her body, sluggish and dipped in dull pain, heart steady and slow. And her mind just outside it all, frantic for reasons that were just out of reach. Then she gasped, lightning coursing through her, and sat straight up on a bed.

“Itachi!”

A door slammed open. Mikoto looked around--naked walls, clean under Sharingan’s harsh light, a lonely window with a growing tree beside it. Her heart rattled in her chest.

“Calm down,” said Hizashi in that perpetually even and put-upon voice of his. Mikoto looked at his pale eyes, remembering that Byakugan saw through illusions. “You were poisoned. It’s still not out of your system.”

Why not? “Get it out,” she said, scratching at her forearms until her fingertips were stained red.

“Damn,” said Hizashi. Then his hand swiped at her like a snake.

Mikoto dreamed, maybe. It wasn’t always clear. Her usual day passed: wake up, herd Itachi to the bathroom, feed him, leave him with Isamu or any of the other women (though he never played with the kids anyway), train alone, return home for a hasty lunch, read to Itachi, put up with some random visit from a nosy clanswoman, pass by Rakshasha’s, suffer through some clan meeting where men with gray hair hollered about anything and everything, talk a little with Fugaku, make sure Itachi made it to his room at some point, shower, sex with Fugaku if she felt like it a little (or just couldn’t muster the energy to turn him away). Rinse. Repeat.

Except the images blurred sometimes, or tilted so that Mikoto thought she might pass out on Itachi’s lap as she put him to bed, or wrap her hands around Fugaku’s neck in a suffocating clasp. Once, Itachi got lankier and gave her a sinister grin that took up most of his face, then stabbed Mikoto in the eye.

“Is she better?” Fugaku asked.

“Vitals look more stable than yesterday,” said Hizashi’s voice, another anomaly in the fog.

Itachi sidled up to her once. She stared at his little face for a bit, relieved that all the blood was gone, and sank into the molasses once more. Some time later, after what felt like days of struggling, she pulled herself up by the window sill, squinting at the sunrays breaking through the tree branches. The hospital. She couldn’t be anywhere else. If she strained her ears, she could hear footsteps hitting the sidewalk below, not as much as she would have expected. Konoha’s soldiers were still mostly gone.

Mechanically, she took inventory of her body. Breath, heart rate, ears, nose, eyes (Sharingan included) all right. Limbs sluggish but pain free; no scar on her thigh, where the enemy ninja struck her. Urinary catheter in place, uncomfortable with every shifting motion she made, but also painless. Two IV lines, one neatly tucked under transparent adhesive tape and another dripping clear fluid into her veins. In the middle of her self-inspection, none other than Hyuuga Hizashi entered her room. Not everything during the last however-long had been a dream, then.

“Name, registration number?” asked Hizashi, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Uchiha, Mikoto; zero-zero-five-three-four-eight. I’m in the hospital; Sarutobi Hiruzen is Hokage.”

“About time, you’ve been here five weeks,” said Hizashi. “Want me to take the catheter out?”

It wasn’t how Mikoto would’ve chosen to reconnect with Hizashi--in fact, she might not have chosen to reconnect with him at all--but she did want the thing out. She winced as he did it, proving that she wasn’t as recovered as she would have hoped. Not a single question passed her lips before she passed out.

* * *

 

“No amount of cajoling or threats made that Hyuuga ex-partner of yours work faster,” said Rakshasha the next time Mikoto came to.

Mikoto opened her mouth to ask for a bedpan, but decided to try and get up and go to the bathroom. A few minutes later, she was mentally patting herself on the back for managing that much, then laughing quietly to herself about how far she’d fallen.

“How’s Itachi?” she asked after making it back to bed.

“Asking for you nonstop,” said Rakshasha. “I think Fugaku misses the mute days.”

Mikoto smiled. That scared “mama” had not been a dream. “He didn’t suffer any injuries, right?”

“Not a one,” said Rakshasha, “though no one’s that impressed since they found him dipped in blood. Did you use him as decoy or something?”

“No,” said Mikoto, shaking her head. Hadn’t Itachi explained what had happened with that Grass ninja he’d . . . killed? “How’s the war going?”

“Shitty, according to all reports,” said Rakshasha, rubbing her walking cane nervously. “The Third sent out another battalion of barely-chuunin to the frontlines last week, and any trainee with anything resembling a hint of talent got a headband. At least the villagers got scared shitless in the last Iwa attack, so they’re cooperating with us for now. No more whining about sugar in the foreseeable future.”

“Who’s guarding our borders?”

“The Hyuuga,” said Rakshasha with a bitter snort, “though ‘guarding’ is too generous a term. We’re averaging one siege a week. Iwa just doesn’t give a shit anymore; they’re zerg-rushing it. And Kumo’s got the army by the balls out in the frontlines.”

Terrible news. Mikoto needed to get out of the damned hospital, whip her body back into shape, and prepare for the worst.

“Somebody get me Hizashi,” she said. “There must be a bell to summon him or something.”

There was indeed a bell on her bed, but all it summoned was a cheery girl who wasn’t even a ninja--“just got a gentle hand for bandages, ma'am”--who informed them that “Hizashi-san” was in the middle of surgery, but she would let him know Mikoto wanted to speak to him as soon as possible.

“Shit, just how understaffed are we?”

“Ssshh,” said Rakshasha. “We aren’t sitting ducks. We have plenty of shinobi to spare.”

* * *

 

Hizashi didn’t come that day, or the next. Mikoto considered storming out of her plain little room, but she could take maybe ten steps before her calves burned and her breath shortened. Whatever Grass poison hit her had done something to her body, something that made her useless even though her chakra flowed as smoothly as ever. She spent hours every day weaving tendrils of if through a purple bead necklace Rakshasha had left her for entertainment.

The third day of her convalescence, Fugaku finally brought Itachi for a visit. He climbed onto her bed, beaming brighter than she’d ever seen.

“Mama, I missed you,” he said, throwing his thin arms around her neck.

Much to her horror, she had to focus as to not let fat tears roll down her cheeks. She hugged Itachi to her chest, wondering why his voice sounded so natural when she’d only heard it once before.

“Shisui says I have to be good or you won’t come back, so I talk all the time now,” said Itachi.

“Who’s Shisui?” asked Mikoto, raising a hand to run through Itachi’s hair. She hoped that her strength didn’t leave her before Fugaku decided to take him back home.

“Isamu’s nephew, or something like that,” said Fugaku, rubbing the back of his neck. Perhaps unwittingly, he stood beyond the weak afternoon sunlight streaming to Mikoto’s window, looking sallow and tired.

“How long has it been, exactly?” asked Mikoto, looking at Itachi’s tiny toes peeking from his sandals. They’d been smaller. No one had bothered to trim his nails, or even clean out dust and dirt from under them.

“We’re going on the ninth week,” said Fugaku.

“Ninth?” Hadn’t that bastard Hizashi said five weeks? “I have to talk to a goddamned medic.”

“All of them worth the name are out in the frontlines,” said Fugaku, “except for Hyuuga Hizashi, and good luck getting a hold of him.”

Mikoto would yell, demand that he throw whatever political weight he had until The Third delivered Hizashi to her room wrapped in a red bow, but she didn’t want Itachi to see her out of wind and unconscious from too much yelling.

“I’ll asking Xihe to help you, Mama.”

“Who?”

“He has imaginary friends now,” said Fugaku.

“They’re real,” said Itachi. “They do things when I ask them.”

Fugaku shrugged, offering Mikoto a tired look as if to say I don’t know what to do with him anymore. She figured he, of all people, would be beside himself to hear Itachi say anything, no matter how nonsensical. She patted Itachi’s head, then kissed his forehead.

“I have to show you how to keep these clean,” she said, tapping his big toe.

“Things are better in their own way,” said Fugaku while Itachi slipped the tip of a toothpick under his big toenail.

Mikoto always assumed that Itachi didn’t have the dexterity for it before, but maybe he’d just had no reason to bother when Mikoto was always there to handle it for him.

“The villagers are doing their best to keep their heads down,” continued Fugaku, “and what’s left of ANBU has no choice but to cooperate with us. We’ve had to cut down importing to the bare minimum, so it’s not like people got much to fight over anymore.”

“That doesn’t sound like the war’s going any better,” said Mikoto.

“No, I wouldn’t say that,” admitted Fugaku. “But at least it hasn’t gotten any worse.”

* * *

 

Hizashi didn’t show his face the next day, or the day after that, and neither did anyone else. Mikoto supposed everyone was too busy with the war. On the third day, a faint boom reached her window, alerting her of another siege by Grass. Electricity travelled down her spine, doing little to restore her damaged muscles. She gripped Rakshasha’s beads and forced chakra through them until the thread holding them together snapped.

Anger brimming out her pores, Mikoto got out of bed and started going through basic exercises she learned in her first year at the Academy. Squats. Push ups. Lunges. She could do five or so of each, and she had to rest in between each set, her throat burning. Considering that she spent more than a month in bed, unconscious, she had to be grateful for the little improvement.

Fugaku stopped by that evening to make sure she was alright, but didn’t bring Itachi. Mikoto couldn’t fault his decision, but she still pretended to be exhausted. Fugaku left without telling her much, not that she tried to ask for details about the attack. If not for her ever-present exhaustion, she might have stayed awake all night berating herself for such a display of childish petulance.

Either Fugaku was too busy, or he decided to keep to himself--and Itachi--away in retaliation. Mikoto got no visitors for the rest of the week, though she managed to increase her stamina to the point she could do basic kata.

“When am I going to be discharged?” she asked one of the volunteers who brought her food.

“When Hizashi-san says you’re ready, ma’am.”

If he didn’t show his face soon, Mikoto would march herself out the hospital and see who tried to stop her. “What’s the point of keeping me here if he won’t see me?”

“Ma’am, he comes almost every day,” said volunteer. “You’re just asleep.”

That shut her right up. How well could she be recovering if a medic came to see her, presumably examined her, and managed not to wake her? What had that poison done to her?

* * *

 

Minato and Kushina came to visit Mikoto the next day. Together. There weren’t two people Mikoto associated with each other, nevermind that Minato had been interested in Kushina for years. Most men were. Kushina was the most attractive person Mikoto had ever seen, except perhaps for Hizashi.

“I can’t believe those fuckers got you too,” said Kushina, kneeling by her bed. “I can’t believe they’d go after civilians.”

“Mikoto’s not a civilian,” said Minato. “And what exactly is it that you can’t believe?”

“They’re coming into our home and destroying it,” said Kushina.

“As opposed to the infrastructure improvement we’ve been doing in Iwa?”

“Are you on their side?” demanded Kushina.

“I’m on the side of rationality,” said Minato. “Don’t you see that the longer this goes on, the more grudges we end up with? How many more of us will have to die before someone, somewhere, decides to cut their loses?”

Before Kushina could retort, the door opened and Hizashi stepped through. Mikoto opened her mouth, but couldn’t speak a word before Kushina jumped to her feet and enveloped Hizashi in a tight hug. Though Kushina had always been touchy-feely with Hizashi, Mikoto thought it was a little over-the-top how she kissed him on the cheek, practically on his lips. It was almost like . . . well, like she was trying to make Minato jealous.

“I’ve been trying to talk to you for days,” said Kushina.

“I’m a popular man lately,” sighed Hizashi.

“I need to talk to you in private.” She looked at Minato. “Thanks for coming, but I’ve been waiting to see him for weeks.”

Minato nodded, then grabbed Kushina’s arm. “Come on,” he mumbled.

“I’ll come back soon,” she said to Mikoto as they exited the room.

Hizashi rubbed his eyes and sighed tiredly. “I’m discharging you today.”

Of course Hizashi would give her what she wanted, but in the most unsatisfying way possible. “I’m no where close to where I was before this happened.”

“I’ve done all I can for you,” said Hizashi, shrugging. “You’ll either go on getting better, or you won’t.”

“You can’t sent me home with that,” said Mikoto. “I deserve more.”

“It’s more than what most people hit with this poison get,” said Hizashi.

Mikoto opened her mouth.

Hizashi raised a hand and smothered a whimper, then walked to the bed as sat beside Mikoto. “Iwa’s making the poison from something called Seheric Moss, but the army’s been calling it Suicide Moss because most ninja who get hit by it kill themselves if they survive.”

Mikoto didn’t want to die despite it all, but if she had to spend her life panting and passing out every time she had to go to the bathroom . . .

“We’ve managed to isolate and replicate it,” said Hizashi, “but we can’t find an antidote for it. Most victims die of respiratory failure, and suffer from dramatic fatigue if they don’t. Some people get severe, random cramps and spasms.”

“You can’t just do one of those exchange transfusion things?” asked Mikoto. “Or that technique where you drag poison out of the body with chakra.” She didn’t know what it was called, but she’d seen Hizashi do it more than once.

“That’s the problem.” Hizashi shook his head. “The poison keeps doing damage after we clear all of it out, even if we induce high fevers, or hypothermia, or anything. It doesn’t do anything to chakra, either. Just . . . it’s hard to explain if you don’t have Byakuugan. It’s like it burns the wiring in nerves so people can’t move.”

“Are you saying I’m just gonna get worse?”

“No,” said Hizashi. “You hit your worse, then started improving. It’s what happens to Uchiha who get hit by this. And Hyuuga.”

“What?”

“The first people to recover completely were Hyuuga so everyone thought we were just working harder to fix them,” said Hizashi. He rolled his eyes, “That was a fun month. Then two Uchiha got poisoned and they got better too, so everyone started considering that maybe we Hyuuga weren’t just letting shinobi be paralyzed out of spite.”

“Sharingan and Byakuugan protect us from this?” It’d been a long time since Mikoto had been treated to speculation about how the Uchiha and Hyuuga were related, if at all.

“I don’t think it’s that,” said Hizashi, shaking his head. “A few Uchiha without Sharingan have recovered completely, some with Sharingan have recovered only partially. And everyone with Byakuugan has recovered fully, but Byakuugan genetics tend to be extreme.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You’re gonna hear of it eventually. The elders are getting curious again. You know, what would happen if a Hyuuga and an Uchiha had a baby, etc. And . . .” Hizashi looked down and sighed. “Your family, whatever its problems, shouldn’t be dragged into the circus with the Cursed Seal.”

If Mikoto ever said that Hizashi had said such a thing to her, he’d be killed. He’d be killed for less. “Don’t worry,” she said. “My clan would never agree to any deal where an Uchiha my get Sealed.”

He nodded, then stood up. “Just keep exercising, and steadily your stamina will improve . . .”

“Hizashi,” she said and waited for him to look at her. “Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'm going for 2-3 more chapters, depending. Then it's time for a break, or the next story arc in this 'verse. Let's see where the momentum takes me.
> 
> [My blog](http://www.dynamicallyopposed.com/), etc.


End file.
